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Izi phonology
Consonants Izi contains 26 consonant phonemes classified under six manners of articulation and five places of articulation which are shown in the chart below. Consonants are also distinguished by voicing. Both voiced and voiceless stops occur in labial, alveolar, velar, and labio-velar places of articulation. There are also corresponding nasals for each of these places of articulation. Fricatives are always labials, alveolars, and velars; affricates are always labials and alveolars. Izi has both a lateral and non-lateral liquid, but some speakers replace the non-lateral with the lateral liquid. Vowels Izi has an average vowel inventory. There are nine vowel phonemes in Izi, including the canonical vowels and two more front vowels and two more back vowels. Below is a table of the vowels divided by their places of articulation in the oral cavity as well as the position of the root of the tongue: Syntagmatic features Syntagmatic features are related to the syntactic relationship between morphological or phonological units. In Izi, every syllable is marked with one or more features of pitch and quality. The three features of quality in Izi are palatalization, labialization, and neutral. They are regarded as syllable features for several reasons but most importantly since they cause contrast between syllables rather than between individual phonemes. Palatalization is phonetically realized as strong palatal friction or as slight vowel fronting in the syllable and occurs if a syllable margin is a palatal and sometimes when the margin is an alveolar consonant (with the exception of liquids) or bilabial stops. For example, 'to shake a rattle' and , 'a bird' are marked by the palatalization feature because they contain a syllable with a margin. The labialization feature is phonetically realized by the semivowel between a consonant margin and a vowel nucleus, as in 'razor'. It can also occur when the syllable margin is a velar stop, nasal or liquid. The contrast in meaning is exemplified by comparing it to the word 'story'. Lip rounding occurs throughout the entire syllable of , which differentiates it from . The neutral feature is simply the absence of the other two features of quality. There are no consonant margin restrictions other than the absence of and margins found in syllables marked by the labialization and palatalization features. An example of a neutral syllable is 'salt'. Syllable structure There are two distinguished types of syllable structures in Izi: CVN, whose the consonant onset and nasal coda are optional, and N, which consists of a syllabic nasal. Thus, the five possible combinations are V, CV, VN, CVN, N (V is a vowel, C a consonant, and N, a syllabic nasal. There are a few syllable restrictions in Izi: * Consonants and are always in syllables with nuclei consisting of a high back vowel and are marked by the neutral feature. * Consonant is always between vowels , and and is marked by the neutral feature. * High front vowels do not occur in syllables with labialisation and syllables with the neutral feature and consonant margins consisting of fricatives, velar and labio-velar nasals, and stops (except ). * High back vowels do not occur in syllables with palatalisation and syllables with the neutral feature and a consonant margin of . Tone system Izi, like many Niger–Congo languages, has a two-tone system, a high tone and a low tone. Low tone has two variations: raising low tone (L) and non-raising low tone (^L). High tone has only raised high ®. The tone system also has three features: downstep (!), upstep (^) and latent low (‘ placed before the word). Rules for the operation of the tonal variations are as follows: * There is a two-way phonemic contrast after a low tone. Thus, a low tone may be followed by another low tone or a high tone. *A three-way phonemic contrast exists after a high tone, which may be followed by another high tone, a low tone, or a downstep to another high tone. Tone can often change meaning. , pronounced with a high tone followed by a high tone, means 'hand'. However, with two low tones, it means 'worm'. It changes again to mean 'notch mark' when it is pronounced with a high tone followed by a low tone. Finally is a fourth meaning when the high tone follows the low tone, 'place'. External links * Category:Language phonologies